December’s Table of Contents

Thank you all for your patience as we transitioned to our new web host and server over the past week. We’re still smoothing out a few little hiccups, so please bear with us while we get the last little issues fixed up.

We wish you joy in the holiday season ahead, whatever it is that you celebrate, and however you celebrate it.

If you’re buying gifts, and have a friend (or friends) who like space opera, please consider our new Raygun Chronicles anthology (edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt, with beautiful cover art by Paul Pederson), which is officially released on Monday — New York Times bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson calls it “an impressive anthology with an impressive list of contributors, a real showcase of the color and scope of what science fiction can be.” Book sales help to support Every Day Fiction , so you can get a great book and help keep us going at the same time.

We also have What Came Before by Gay Degani scheduled to begin serialization in mid-December — keep an eye on the Every Day Novels website for updates.

Finally, we’ve mailed off our nominations for the Pushcart Prize (because yes, they actually have to be snail mailed, postmarked on or before December 1st). After a vote that was open to our whole editorial team, we chose to nominate three stories this year: “Clear Title” by Brian J. Hunt, “The Only Gifts We Give” by Ian Florida, and “Speed Demon and Clockwork Dancer” by JR Hume. Congratulations!

For Readers

Hanukkah ends on December 5th this year, and although we didn’t get any Hanukkah-themed stories at all, we do have one that at least mentions the holiday and acknowledges that not everyone celebrates this season in the same way: we’ll be featuring Isabella David‘s story “A Lonely Jew at Christmas”.

We have a few Christmas stories for you, too, from “Dwarves Included” by John Peters II on December 23rd to “The Gift” by Kristi DeMeester on Boxing Day. This year, our Christmas Eve story is Katherine Lopez‘s “A Dry Christmas”, and our Christmas Day story is “Somewhat of a Christmas Miracle” by Sarah Russell. And let’s not forget that we’re kicking the month off today with “Christmas Past” by Chella Courington. We hope you’ll enjoy these, and all of our stories — and if you want more seasonal reading, why not check out our archive of Christmas stories from past years.

On New Year’s Eve, we’ll be giving you “The Leaning Man” by Stephen V. Ramey — it’s nothing to do with New Year’s at all, but it just seemed a good fit, the right sort of note to leave the year with.

For Writers

We still need something special for New Year’s Day — come on, writers, don’t leave us hanging with nothing… let’s see some resolutions, some new beginnings, some morning-after-the-night-before, some party-goers who haven’t stopped with the dawn… limited only by the fact that we need it by December 27th to be considered in time for January 1st. Don’t let us down!